Christ and the Media
Sheerin, John B.
for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits." Sheila Cassidy has given eloquent testimony to that audacious faith. I In...
...C.SJ...
...Franz Jffgerstfftter's life is not so quickly objectified as sainthood or subjectified as insanity...
...Zahn, the pacifist, is not directly concerned with that philosophy here but with "the ever-recurring confrontation between Caesar and Christ...
...The enfant terrible who charmed, provoked and infuriated his British audiences is here at his creative best in this volume, at least in his dexterous felicity with words and his colorful imagery, but his generic condemnation of all media is just too, too much...
...Muggeridge sees TV involved in a vast brainwashing operation that corrupts all traditional standards and values, leaving us awash in a sea of erotic and selfcentered fantasy...
...Reissuing the bc• now, just as the memory of Vietnam is fading, is a significant and timely gesture...
...and that the individual Christian must inform his conscience to be able to make ethical decisions and take individual moral responsibility...
...Illinois 60626 AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EDUCATOR/EMPLOYER...
...MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGY 9 Scripture Studies 9 Historical-Systematic Theology 9 Spirituality Courses SUMMER SESSION BEGINS JUNE 18,1979 Department of Theology ~,lr~, ( contact: Sister Mary Peter McG=nty...
...The book, which was originally published in 1964 to record the thenunheralded "heroic sacrifice," is divided into two parts: a narrative-analysis of the events leading up to Jffgerstfftter's execution in Berlin, compiled from letters from prison and interviews with relatives, friends and several priests and prison chaplains he encountered...
...TV and other communications media have unquestionably been exploited or misused...
...In his Jesus Rediscovered (1969) he revealed his new-born faith in Jesus and now finds TV and the other media irreconcilable with Christian faith...
...Malcolm Muggeridge, one of Britain's best known TV personalities, airs his colossal contempt for all the media in this little volume comprising three lectures with audience responses...
...Zahn sees in Jffgerstfi'tter's act--in his unwaveri.g commitment to his conscience, despite numerous pleas to serve from his family, friends and priests--an example which should challen_ge all to reassess their order of priorities...
...Thomas More...
...Earl A. Weis, S.J., ~ LoyolaU niversityo f Chicago Chairman 6525 Nooth St'mr=dan Road Chicago...
...treats Jffgerstfi'tter as a possible saint, at one point drawing a somewhat strained parallel to St...
...Martyrs disturb the general calm of our lives...
...The cynic who was skeptical of American evangelists has become an apostle of the Kingdom...
...JOHN B. SHEERIN IN SOLITARY WITNESS: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FRANZ J.~GERSTATTER, by Gordon Zahn, The Liturgical Press, $4.95 paper [277pp...
...This young, uneducated Austrian peasant-farmer and father of three daughters was beheaded in 1943 for refusing to serve in Hitler's army in a war which he considered unjust and ufider a regime which persecuted his church...
...Religious Comm on wea l: 60...
...He says: "If you want to know my absolutely candid opinion, I think the best thing to do is not to look at television and to that end, I have, as has been said, disposed of my set...
...but abuse of God's blessing is no valid argument against proper use...
...Gordon Zahn, who has written on German Catholic capitulation to the Nazis at length in German Catholics and Hitler's Wars...
...Zahn draws conclusions here similar to those in his other works, specifically, that no one ought to render automatic support to "legitimate authority...
...The story is fairly well-known now, with editions in several languages...
...By either idealizing their suffering--stressing the "solace" they found in death--or by viewing them as extreme religious fanatics, we quell the uneasiness their stories inevitably cause...
...Jesus himself was a communicator but Muggeridge claims that had the Lord himself met with a fourth temptation in the desert, this time an offer to preach the Gospel on prime TV, he would have turned down the temptation and preferred the way of the cross as the means of communicating his message...
...These writings are distinguished for their extensive knowledge of the Bible (he was a sexton) and for their acute perception of the conflict between duty to country and faith in God, a commitment above that to nation, community or family...
...and the complete text of nine "commentaries" he wrote before his imprisonment...
...that religious communities are responsible for endangering dissent against all injustice...
...They force us to probe the limits of our conscience and our faith, pointing to the weaknesses in our moral and spiritual lives and, in comparison, trivializing our ethical choices...
...It only argues that the redeemed who misuse TV need to be more redeemed and more selective at the tuning dials...
...I In brief CHRIST AND THE MEDIA, by Malcolm Muggeridge, Eerdmans, $5.95 [123 pp...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 2
